Proposal: Creating music that evokes complex emotions intentionally and accurately for use in therapeutic

and healing contexts

Overview and Background

Music and art were of central importance in my house growing up. My mother, a clinical psychologist and art
therapist, and my father, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, supported me in my initial dream of becoming a music
producer and artist. Both loved music deeply, were sensitive, and artistic (my father owned an art gallery and enjoyed
playing piano). Beyond their artistic and musical interests, life had taken them in a beautiful path to understand the
human psyche and how to help it heal through word, presence, or prescription. In my young mind, music making was
abundantly distinct from my parents’ professional practices—something that gave me a peculiar sense of pride
amidst the inquiries about whether I, too, was going to become a therapist or medical professional of some sort. All I
knew was that making and listening to music gave me great curiosity and excitement, sometimes even confidence or
comfort, but I couldn’t begin to grasp music’s healing possibilities. Little did I know that music was an ancestral form
of medicine, practiced by many (if not all) cultures around the globe. Some cultures make medicinal music a central
element of their healthcare systems, whilst others create music with a vision of entertainment and fun. Regardless of
the vision, the fact is music has been an invaluable ally throughout humanity’s evolution; it sounds through our lives,
present in celebration and grief. This alliance, I believe, can be cultivated to increase the healing possibilities of our
music. Now I see that my path is that of healing too, and my chosen medicine is music. My vision is to combine my
understandings of music therapy, neuropsychology, music composition/production, philosophy, and spirituality
consciously, through my own creative process. In essence, I set out to explore which elements of my music creation
process are most essential in the capacity I have to create potentially healing music that evokes complex emotions
intentionally and accurately. But more on that later. First, I’ll give you a brief and relevant overview of my story, with
the hope you will be able to understand my vision and passion more intimately.

One year after finishing high school, I set out to pursue a double major in Contemporary Writing and Production and
Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music. After four years, I graduated with the highest honors and was ready to
embark on a life as a music producer and composer in the ever-expanding and beautiful Mexico City, my hometown. I
started freelancing for a couple of studios in the city, working as a composer, producer, mix engineer, and even music
supervisor. Then the pandemic came, and my path seemed to be infused with a good dose of instability. Life ceased
to have the clearly defined routines I had been accustomed to my whole life, and work with the studios became
sporadic. Amidst this time of change, I intuitively embarked on a spiritual path. I started meditating daily, practiced
various consciousness-enhancing techniques such as breathwork and mantra chanting, and started undergoing
psychoanalysis. Slowly but steadily, my life became charged with meaning and expansion. As I observed the deeply
meaningful, symbolic relationships between everything arise, I came to realize music had a particularly potent way of
representing this meaning. Music could be so many things to so many people simultaneously. It could reflect
something of value to us all, even considering all our individual, social, and spiritual complexity. Music ceased to be a
tool for entertainment; it became an invaluable ally in my own self-discovery and understanding.

Every time I attended a music festival, I saw the DJ or performer not only as an entertainer but as a kind of shaman
or wizard, holding and sustaining the audience through unifying, entraining sound. With body and mind surrendered
to their rhythm, I was able to let go and allow myself to feel. Inspired and moved by what I heard and felt, I launched
my own artistic project, Vazlá. Combining electronic music with philosophical and spiritual themes, Vazlá quickly
found a home in conscious dance communities. Everywhere around me, I could see how music positively impacted
human experience. It was part of every ritual and celebration; it helped us understand who we are and even access
painful emotions in a tolerable way. This realization fueled my desire to understand and harness the healing potential
of music, leading me to pursue a Diploma in Music Therapy at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico).
My parents’ professional world came closer to me than ever before, and I discovered my hereditary passion for the
psyche. Intertwining this newfound interest with my passions for music, dance, and meditation, my quest to explore
the depths of my human experience was on. During my studies, I became particularly intrigued by Helen Bonny’s
Guided Imagery and Music (GIM) method, which uses curated musical programs to evoke deep emotional and
symbolic journeys. My final research project delved into this method, revealing the profound connection between
music, imagination, self-discovery, and the healing process at large. I observed how the participants in the study
experienced very specific imaginative processes, suggesting a symbolic and energetic link between the musical
program, the imagery, and the participants´ inner life. I discovered that music can be such a potent helper in our
self-discovery because it is so symbolically powerful in nature; music is wide enough to represent all of our stories
and complexity back to us. Furthermore, aided by the musical program, even uncomfortable emotions in the
participant’s inner life became accessible and tolerable to observe. These observations were consistent with the
known fact that music can help activate the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain associated with the regulation of
thoughts, actions, and emotions. I believe, as many currents of thought in psychoanalysis postulate, that allowing
ourselves to see us completely, with our darkness included, can lead to greater self-acceptance and understanding,
granting our minds and bodies healing relief. The link between music, self-observation, self-understanding,
self-acceptance, and healing itself became apparent to me, inspiring me tremendously. The question then appeared:
How can I create music that facilitates access to specific states of human consciousness? How can I create the most
beneficial and healing musical programs and experiences? How can I test the helpfulness of my music in aiding
others access deeper self-awareness? Finally, these questions and journey bring me here, to the typing of this
proposal. Through my master’s project, I intend to expand my understanding of the creation of medicinal and
therapeutic music by combining my background in music production and composition with the principles of music
therapy, neuropsychology, philosophy, and spirituality. Specifically, I intend to create a compilation of musical pieces
that intentionally evoke complex emotions. I want to explore those emotions through me and my artistic process; how
they are represented musically as well as how a musical recording can transmit the intended emotional qualities
infused in it with the most clarity and potency.

Scientific Context
It has become abundantly clear that emotions and music are intimately related. Anders C. Green et al. showed, for
example, that minor modes of music, apart from being identified by most as sadder, cause increased activity in limbic
structures compared to major modes.1 These regions process a great deal of emotions and emotionally-linked
memories, as well as a good amount of self-reflection and emotional regulation. Another study explored how melody,
harmony, and rhythm engaged the brain in a process of prediction, leading us to deeper emotional involvement. All
elements of music play a role in evoking different emotional reactions by activating different parts of the brain.2 And
although a good amount of research has been done linking musical elements to brain structures and the resulting
subjective experiences, I am particularly interested in exploring these findings through my own music creation
process, exploring how I can consciously engage different regions of a listener’s brain by taking the according
compositional and sound design decisions.

Researchers like Wiebke Trost and Patrik Vuilleumier have done a great deal of research mapping what they called
“complex” emotions experienced whilst listening to music to areas of the brain. On their “Mapping aesthetic musical
emotions in the brain” research, Trost and her team found, for example, that “high-arousal emotions (Tension, Power,
and Joy) also correlated with activations in sensory and motor areas, whereas low-arousal categories (Peacefulness,
Nostalgia, and Sadness) selectively engaged ventromedial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus.” They have also
studied how music exerts a process of entrainment at a cognitive and motor level, and the effect this has on the
affective experience of the listener. These studies show that music has a powerful way of guiding us towards complex
and profound emotional experiences, laying a foundation on which I can build my own artistic vision. It is my ultimate
aim, through the artistic research project I aim to undertake at Catalyst, to understand how I can harness the
knowledge collected through studies such as these and enhance my creative music-making process to create music
that can be of therapeutic usefulness.

As a different example, Masaru Emoto's experiments in the late XX century explored how stimuli—such as music,
spoken words, and intentions—affect the structure of water crystals. He exposed water to different types of music or
words and then froze it to observe the resulting crystal formations under a microscope. Harmonious stimuli, such as
classical music or positive affirmations, produced intricate, symmetrical crystals, while dissonant music or negative
words led to fragmented, chaotic structures. Although much controversy revolves around his work, his findings
suggest that recorded music can carry, through its vibratory qualities (understood as the different elements of music
represented through the speakers), an energetic charge capable of influencing matter, implying that a musical
recording can embody and transmit an emotional charge. By cultivating awareness of my physical, emotional, mental,
and subtle states during the creative process, I can infuse my music with a clearer emotional intention, potentially
resonating more deeply with listeners on multiple levels. How can I most closely align the symbolism and energetic
charge of my music with that of the intentioned emotion? Does presence and flow states affect the potency and
accuracy of the musically-evoked emotions?
Project Methodology
The proposed project aims to explore how recorded music can best transmit intended emotional information. What
elements are at play musically and technically, as well as energetically (meaning the wide range of internal states
present in me at the moment of creation)? What roles and challenges do composers, producers, musicians, and
engineers have in creating the clearest emotionally-charged music recording that can aid listeners in their own
self-discovery and healing processes? Here is a detailed vision for the project in three phases:

In the first phase, I will compose and produce a collection of musical pieces combining elements of ambient music,
Latin-American rhythms, folk, psychedelia, and electronic music. The composition and production processes will be
guided by my own intuitive musicality as well as by the discoveries of how different musical elements affect diverse
structures of the brain (as stated before). Each piece will embody a specific emotion such as compassion, fear,
security, or shame, for example. Before recording each piece, I will set a clear intention, engaging in a brief
meditative exercise centered on the chosen emotion; How does that emotion present itself on my body, how does it
affect my mind? If recording with more musicians or engineers, a guided visualization will unfold so we can all be
immersed in the emotion, not just through words but through shared reflections and evocative imagery placed
throughout the studio. These activities will unite individual intentions, enhancing the emotional landscape we aim to
evoke. Furthermore, I will continue the exploration of how awareness and modulation of my own biofield at the
moment of creation has an impact on the final result. I’ve engaged with this subtle energetic field in live
performances, modulating its expansion and contraction, finding unexpected and exciting results. Ultimately, the idea
is to align the bodies, minds, and subtle fields of everyone engaged in the creation of these pieces to the emotional
charge we want to infuse in the recording. While I will lead the composition and production process, guest musicians
will be invited to contribute their interpretations, charging the pieces with their unique insights and improvisational
energy. Each session will be meticulously documented in a personal journal, capturing the themes of my daily life as
well as production and composition sessions—observations that might later reveal useful patterns in the final
analysis.

The second phase will extend this exploration to an audience. Group research sessions will take place, and
participants will be led through a brief relaxation exercise, grounding themselves in the present moment. As each
piece plays through high-quality speakers, they will embark on a journey through sound, allowing the music to
resonate within them. After listening to each piece, participants will share their immediate impressions through a
digital questionnaire, capturing their raw, unfiltered responses. This questionnaire will blend quantitative and
qualitative insights, providing rich data on what their experience was like. Participants will select, from a list of
options, which emotion they felt the music conveyed most. They will also rate their experience’s pleasure or
discomfort on a scale of one to ten. Beyond numbers, they will be invited to share how the music impacted them on
different levels (such as physically or mentally), offering glimpses into their inner world and the effects the music
recording had on it. This combination of qualitative and quantitative data will provide a rich tapestry of feedback that
will help me understand if the intended emotion was transmitted to the audience at a statistically significant rate.
Additionally to this, playing the musical pieces to someone while undertaking a MRI scan could aid in understanding
what areas of the brain were activated most by each piece, allowing me to compare the effect my music had on the
participant’s brain with that of previous research. This, if possible, could allow me to create a more complete map of
how musical and sound design elements in my own music, as well as the intention behind creation, relate to listener
experience on physiological and psychological levels, aiding in the understanding of how I can best create potentially
healing musical pieces, programs, and events.

In the final phase, this wealth of data will be carefully analyzed. The primary focus will be on the alignment between
the emotions we intended to convey and the ones participants experienced. Did the music resonate as intended, or
did it uncover unexpected emotional landscapes? Secondary analyses will delve deeper, relating patterns of the
audience’s experience with observations recorded in my personal journal (which will include general daily comments
as well as detailed descriptions of the composition, recording, and mixing sessions). Together, these insights will offer
a profound understanding of how my own inner states can influence my creative process as well as my music’s
capacity to evoke intended emotional states in others—a step closer to harnessing its healing potential. This journey,
merging art with research, aims to create music that doesn’t merely entertain but illuminates the path to self-discovery
and emotional connection. This, in my opinion, revolutionizes the role of the contemporary music-maker, inviting us to
be more aware of the energetic qualities we put out to the world through our music.
 Why Catalyst?
I believe there are three main reasons why Catalyst is the ideal place for me to undertake this project. Firstly, the
community. Catalyst boasts a vibrant network of students and a professional, talented staff. I am confident that within
this environment, I will connect with open-minded individuals eager to collaborate with respect and authenticity—both
within my research project and by inviting me into theirs. The potential for growth by being part of a creative and
dedicated community of artists fills me with enthusiasm.

Secondly, the location—Berlin and Europe at large—holds profound significance. The city’s rich culture and history
offer countless lessons, especially in its openness to relatively new practices such as music therapy. In Mexico,
education in this area is limited to the diploma level, which has somewhat stalled my development in this field. While I
understand that Catalyst's program is not specifically focused on music therapy, Germany’s progressive stance on
such practices makes this location particularly desirable to me. Additionally, my wife’s family has deep roots in Berlin
but had to leave during the 1940s. Returning to this city now represents an important step in the transgenerational
healing of our family. On a personal level, a significant part of my ancestry is Spanish—I hold both Spanish and
Mexican passports—and being closer to my family in Spain promises invaluable opportunities for reconnection.

Lastly, Catalyst’s focus on artistic research promises to be an ideal framework to undertake this project. To be
supported and guided through a multidimensional deep-dive of my own creative process, exploring every step with
seriousness and open-mindedness, thrills me. Understanding the intricacies of my own creative process and how
they relate to listener experience may prove fundamental in my capacity to create music that has the ability to aid in
the healing journey of the listener. Not many institutions position research through artistic endeavors front and center,
and it is something I feel passionately about and am eager to undertake.

Thank you for taking the time to review and consider my project proposal. It is my hope that you will find it as
fascinating and potentially beneficial to myself and other artists as I do.

References

1. Green, A. C., Baerentsen, K. B., Stødkilde-Jørgensen, H., Wallentin, M., Roepstorff, A., & Vuust, P. (2008).
Music in minor activates limbic structures: a relationship with dissonance?. Neuroreport, 19(7), 711–715.
https://doi.org/10.1097/WNR.0b013e3282fd0dd8
2. Vuust, P., Heggli, O. A., Friston, K. J., & Kringelbach, M. L. (2022). Music in the brain. Nature reviews.
Neuroscience, 23(5), 287–305. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41583-022-00578-5
3. Emoto, M. (2007). The healing power of water. Hay House.